Egging a civil servant has earned a graduate student a 20-day sentence.
The Taiwan High Court on Tuesday upheld a lower court’s guilty verdict against National Chengchi University (NCCU) student Kao Juo-hsiang (高若想) for obstructing a public servant during a protest outside the Ministry of Education on July 4 last year.
Kao was among a group of 20 students calling on the ministry to include research and teaching assistants under the Labor Insurance and the National Health Insurance programs as stipulated under the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
Kao was charged with obstruction for crushing an egg over the head of an official from the Department of Higher Education, surnamed Wang (王), who had come out to accept an official complaint from the protesters on behalf of the ministry.
Kao admitted to crushing the egg over Wang’s head, but pleaded innocent, saying her actions were in protest against the ministry’s long-time negligence of research and teaching assistants, and against its 2014 policy stipulating the separation of learning, or internships, and actual employment.
She said her actions were the result of long pent-up frustration with the ministry and occurred “after all channels of communication within the system had been exhausted.”
Kao said she and the National Student Labor Union had sent multiple reports to the ministry on the treatment of assistants, or the systems in more than 140 schools, and had asked legislators to press the issue with the education ministry and the Ministry of Labor, but to no avail.
Kao was sentenced to 20 days detention, which can be commuted to a fine of NT$20,000, a suspended sentence of two years and 40 hours of community service.
She was not in court on Tuesday to hear the verdict, which is the final one in the case, the High Court said.
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